


Five Ways It Could Have Gone Wrong, and One Way It Didn't

by b00mgh



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, but not necessary, everyone cries, hardcore langst, it was all a dream fic, klance if you want to read it that way, that's pretty much it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-24 02:11:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13801176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b00mgh/pseuds/b00mgh
Summary: Lance isn't himself anymore.





	Five Ways It Could Have Gone Wrong, and One Way It Didn't

5 Ways It Could Have Gone Wrong and One Way It Didn’t

 

SHIRO 

Lance isn't himself.    
He hasn't been for a long time– although only Hunk would really be able to tell you that with any accuracy, and he's sort of forgotten what Lance was like when he was himself. They've been out amongst the stars far too long. Today is the last day though; they're all going home.    
Actually, the correct semantics would be that most everyone is going home. Keith and Shiro don't really have a home to return to. Be that as it were, Keith decided to remain on the ship for a while and Shiro went to make sure everyone made it to their families safely.    
Pidge had gone home first, being closest to the landing spot, and her mother had sobbed for the one family member returned and the two lost. She had hugged Shiro as if he was her son too, which gave him all sorts of feelings that he felt very strange about feeling. They had left her with her mom to tell her story, and the trio departed to meet their own families.    
Hunk was next up, and both his moms crushed him in a hug and pelted him with questions while their dog barked excitedly from behind the screen door. After Hunk assured them he would tell his story in due time, both mom's moved on, in synchronized movements, to Lance. They hugged him softly and asked if he was okay-- which confused Shiro and reminded Hunk. Once reminded, Hunk urged his moms to let Lance go to his house, to which they appraised all three boys, assented, and then gave Shiro a lingering hug filled with profuse thanks for keeping both their boys safe. Lance smiled at them, which reminded Shiro that he couldn't remember when Lance last smiled so genuinely. They left Hunk to tell his story and to make their last stop.    
The McClain home was farther, and the house was very lived-in, and large. As they came walking up, as if by some intuition (but most likely because she had been doing the dishes by a front window), Lance's mother came pouring out of the house with tears in her eyes to wrap herself protectively around her son. She took a moment to recognize Shiro, and smiled gratefully his way, but ultimately decided to appraise her son's well being first.    
"Are you alright? I know that look. Have you been taking your medication?" She spoke all in one breath, like if she spoke to slow her son might disappear again.    
"Medication?" Shiro echoed blankly. He didn't know Lance needed medication. They had been together in space for so long, Lance had never mentioned medication.    
"They don't exactly have pharmacies where we were, Mama," Lance murmured.    
That nearly broke Mrs. McClain, her tears began to overflow from her eyes. "My sweet boy, I'm so sorry," she held him closer, "I don't know why you left, but I'm sorry you had to go somewhere where you couldn't take care of yourself."    
Lance lifted his head from his mother's shoulder to say "I didn't know I had to leave, Mama, I'm sorry I didn't get to say goodbye. I didn't want to leave." He was getting misty-eyed and sniffly, "I'll tell you the whole story later."    
Shiro, bemused and feeling oddly guilty of a crime he wasn't privy to, excused himself and headed back to the castle, where Allura, Coran, and Keith were waiting with dinner.    
  
The next morning, after telling their stories, everyone returned to the ship to show their families that they had told the truth. This was all part of the plan, and as such everyone remaining in the castle had set up something of a party.    
Everyone arrived right around the same time-- Pidge (her mother still called her Katie) and her mom, Hunk and both his moms, and Lance with around eight siblings and a mom and a dad. Hunk and Lance's family were tight knit, and all four parents stuck together, while the McClain children (although technically the oldest was 17, a year younger than Lance and nearly an adult) were led around the castle by a mesmerizing pair of aliens. Mrs. Holt– first name Eliza– stuck shyly close to Shiro, because she knew him, though vaguely, until he urged her to meet the other parents, largely because he had some questions for the others.    
He asked Hunk's parents if their son had always been such a gifted mechanic and cook, and if there was anything that he should have known before they began their adventure. He asked Lance's parents if he had always been so jovial and optimistic, and if there was anything that he should have known before they began their adventure.    
Hunk's mom, Sarah, told him that their son had always been that way, and that he always helped her in the kitchen when he had time. Hunk's mom, Laura, told him that they just wished they could have sent post cards or text messages or a damn tweet. Everyone has missed their kids.    
Lance's dad, Robert, was a quiet man and simply gave a lopsided smile and a nod. His mom, Victoria, explained that Lance always took too much on himself and that he always tried to keep everyone's chins up.    
"You mentioned medication yesterday, Mrs. McClain, does Lance have a medical condition?" Shiro asked as he began to feel more settled around the older adults.    
Robert's smile dropped and Victoria looked to her hands. Sarah and Laura looked at each other and the McClains nervously. Eliza frowned in concern.    
Robert opened his mouth to respond, but Victoria beat him to it, "Lance usually takes medication for his depression."   
Suddenly, the attention of everyone in the room-- paladins, aliens, siblings, parents-- was drawn to Victoria McClain, "He's had it since he was very young, he's tried to kill himself three times."    
Suddenly all sorts of things made sense: the way Lance pushed people away when he needed them, the sad looks he gave the wall when he thought no one was around, the self-sacrificing stance he took in battle, the way he stared aimlessly into space, the fact that he hadn't smiled in months. Guilt filled Shiro, black like tar and thick, he should have known, or guessed.    
All eyes turned to him, accusing, hateful.    
Lance's wrists were dripping red and his eyes were dripping blue.    
Shiro should have known, he should have known better.    
And then he woke up, eyes snapping open from the disturbing dream. It faded slowly, the dripping red turning a dusty maroon and the hateful stares blurring. Just a dream-- and of course it was. Lance was the same smiley, sharpshooting smart mouth that he'd always been. Even if there were moments that gave cause for wonder. Shiro shifted under his blanket in the artificial night and returned fitfully to sleep.

  
  


ALLURA

Lance isn't himself.    
Maybe it's the way he's been walking slower or the way he's eating less or the fact that he hasn't had a beauty-related complaint or an ill-timed flirt for weeks. Maybe it's how he's got dark circles under his eyes. Maybe it's how his smiles are seeming more forced with every passing day.     
It's been such an insidious change that it's been hard to notice the gradation from upbeat light-bringer to downtrodden shadow. Even if one did notice it, the metamorphosis could easily be misconstrued as gaining maturity, since maturity and pain are often mixed up.    
Allura doesn't know Lance very well yet, they've been a little busy aboard the castle, so she assumed he was growing out of his stupid puns and flirtations like the rest of the team.   
'Assumed' in the past tense.    
She just passed Lance in the hallway, the blue paladin was waddling back to his room after a shower-- and he's usually so careful about bringing his clothes, but this time he must have forgotten, because he's only wearing a towel-- and Allura is at just the right angle to see the lines of red scraping over his right arm. A few are still bleeding little, stifled drops, and a lot look aggravated and red, but several have scarred over already and that's what catches Allura’s attention. If these were from some scrape or scratch from a fight, their latest being a week ago, they would have all healed at roughly the same rate.    
"What happened to your arm, Lance?" Allura blurted, knowing she would probably get a more comprehensive answer if she waited until Lance had his clothes on.    
Looking defensive, Lance hid his cuts and avoided her eyes, "Tripped on a rock during that last fight."    
Maybe, on some unconscious level, Allura didn't want the truth, because she certainly accepted that answer. Both blue paladins left in opposite directions, Lance to his room and Allura to the bridge.    
  
It's around a week later, and Lance is only getting quieter, when everyone hears Keith shouting with an unmistakable rage and they all run to find him in a hallway with Lance and an elephant. Lance is studying the floor between the pair and Keith is regarding Lance's red arm murderously. There's more red than last time Allura saw it, and she steps between the boys with anxious, practiced calm.    
"What seems to be the issue?"    
For a second, Keith looks like he might explode again, instead he settles for crossing his arms and scoffing, "Show them your arm, Lance." There was palpable reluctance, but Lance did lift his arm to show the grotesque mess of scars and cuts and blood crisscrossing like the stripes on a Grethlehorn.    
"Jesus..." Shiro sighed.    
Lance still would not look anyone in the eye, "I'm sorry."    
Pidge looked horrified and Hunk looked guilty. Coran wasn't sure what this meant but she knew a hurt paladin was never good. Shiro looked determined and Keith looked hateful. Allura tried to remain impassive, calm, steady as she took Lance by the shoulder and led him slowly to the medical bay.    
But Lance was melting. His whole being was disintegrating into shadows and tears and blood. The cuts on his arms became fountains and they overflowed and Allura was trying to drag Lance, because if she could just stop the fountains from overflowing, then Lance would be okay again. Eventually there was so little of Lance to carry that she began tripping over the mess of blood on the floor, and then she woke up.    
There's a cold sweat coating her whole body like early-onset slipperies, but Allura manages to calm herself. Lance is fine. He’s a fool, but he would never do something so terrible. He's always so happy, of course there's nothing wrong. Allura manages to get back to sleep eventually.    
  


 

CORAN

Lance isn't himself.    
He would convince you otherwise-- he'd swear it to his dying day-- and the paladins and princess and advisor of Voltron believe him, but it's hard to lie to a telepathic communication. Blue knows better.    
Blue knows that he hurts and that if there wasn't a weekly fight with some galra fleet leaving him bruised and exhausted, he would be giving himself the same injuries the enemy likes to inflict. She can't stop it. She's just a giant magical space robot cat. She can't fit into a room to sit with him, and her purrs across their bond are only able to soothe so much self-hatred.    
Lance feels like a weight, ready to sink to the bottom of the ocean, but he needs to get out of Voltron's pockets before he drags them down too.    
Blue can see what he thinks, and she won't lose another Paladin, not like this she won't, so she tries to reach out to the other lions, tells them to tell their humans to talk to hers. Paladins are better at fixing each other, unfortunately for Blue.    
They pass along the message with just hints at first: "Why don't we go chat with our good old pal, Lance," "Hey, Lance looks down, why don't we go see what's up," "Please, my friend, please talk to Lance." The humans are befuddled at first: "I chat with Lance all the time," "he just gets in moods, he always has,” “he's okay," "is something going on?" 

Allura gets similar messages from the mice, from her connection to the castle. 

Coran is getting the same idea just by looking at the paladin in question: there’s heavy silence hanging around him and deep shadows beneath him. Alfor got like this for weeks at certain points in the war against the galra, he can see in Lance’s eyes the same look Alfor has when he told Coran and Allura to get in cryopods, when he said goodbye.    
It takes around a week of prodding before anyone else finally gets a clear picture of the concern they should be feeling.    
By then, Lance has found a whole planet of ocean right down the solar system from where the castle is parked and he is going to drop himself right into it, he'll finally fix Voltron's deadweight issue. He'll be gone. 

He does need a ride to the oceanic planet, however, and Blue will have no part in it. She'll let him in the cockpit, because locking him out is never an option, but she won't take off. Eventually, Lance gets frustrated with her resistance and takes a pod out on his own.    
It's the middle of the night and Blue is screaming along her connection to Lance for him to stop, it's loud enough to wake up the other lions. They all take a few minutes to recognize what's going on before acknowledging the horror that comes from losing a paladin and communicating to their respective paladins that they needed to go get theirs back. Coran had been up doing maintenance, and could only helplessly steer the ship towards Lance’s chosen planet while Allura powered the engines and the paladins got to their lions in record speed.

All of them were screaming, and in Pidge and Hunk's case sobbing. and they were so scared because _ how could they not have known before _ ?   
Little did they know that Lance was poised to fall at the outermost edge of the hazy atmosphere, his mind a numbed white static, pins and needles replacing thoughts. Coran was as helpless then as he was thousands of years ago, watching Alfor march sternly, resolvedly, dejectedly to his death.   
As Lance tipped himself into the air, Blue decided that no one else was moving fast enough for her and she shot out of her hanger in her own. The other lions were scarcely six seconds behind her, but those turned out to be a precious six seconds indeed when Blue just barely caught Lance in her mouth as his body plummeted towards the liquid depths below. He'd have a mild concussion from where his head hit the seat at an unnatural angle, and a few cuts and bruises, but he was quiznacking alive, and that was what brought Coran to sit for a few numbing seconds while the lions came back to the castle, and he rushed to get Lance and drag him to a medical pod. 

When Blue opened her jaw, Lance opened his eyes, looking so heartbroken. "I'd always wanted to die in the ocean." He murmured absently.    
All the others were trying to get to them, trying to help them, but they couldn't get close. No one could get anywhere. Everyone was stuck in the white noise and fuzz of TV static and they were only getting farther away. Coran was terrified, barely keeping himself together as Lance’s face blurred with Alfor’s and they were both just  _ covered _ in blood and dirt and fear and pain.    
Coran sighed awake anxiously. It had felt so real, all of it, and he couldn't bring himself to lay close his eyes. He reasoned to himself that Lance seemed fine– nowhere near what Alfor had been at least. His smiles faltered sometimes and he was looking a little tired lately, but these weren't the same things. Lance was fine. Everything was fine. Coran eventually settle down and went back to sleep.    
  


 

PIDGE

Lance isn’t himself. 

Pidge doesn't really notice it though, she's neck-deep in technology from alien planets and only really emerges for training and maybe eating and the "Treat YoSelf" Nights that she has with Lance, and occasionally Allura.    
When he calls off their "Treat YoSelf" Night the first time, claiming that he was tired, she thought nothing of it. He was tired. End of story. Did she sort of miss having him brush and style her growing hair, and putting on a face mask with him and wearing really nice clothes and talking about god-knows-what? Not that she'd ever admit aloud, but yes. But Lance was tired that night, another night would be fine.    
The next morning, Lance isn't at breakfast and she can tell by the haunted look in Keith and Coran's eyes that it isn't because he overslept.    
"Where's Lance?" she asks naively. Hunk enters the room behind her.    
Coran breaks the news because Keith can't seem to form the words, "Lance is in a healing pod."    
"There were no galra attacks yesterday, were there?" It's half of a joke, the other half was supposed to be Lance's awful pun out of nowhere. It doesn't come.    
"No. I'm afraid his injuries were..." Coran hesitates around this word, "self-inflicted."    
Pidge has to sit down for a second. "Is he okay?" she manages between teary eyes.    
"He has yet to stabilize."    
Hunk is muttering to himself, “... hasn’t in  _ years _ , he said he was fine, he just said he was tired, he’d  _ never _ …” 

Before she can feel her feet she’s sprinting to the medical bay. Green is trying to calm her down, but her presence in Pidge’s mind is distorted and hazy, and that only adds to the panic. 

Laid out in a pod with a green-looking tinge to his face, Lance is shifting and mumbling, occasionally taking a breath that’s too deep. Footsteps enter the room behind her. It’s Keith. 

“What did he take?” she asks softly. There’s no response. “What,” she demands, voice hardening, “did he take, Keith?” 

“I’m sorry,” is all he says, “I should have–”

“You’re damn right you should have!” Pidge snaps– and all that’s going through her mind is how she should have been there; they should have been taking care of their skin and doing something funny with his hair and laughing about how nobody can pronounce that Altean word right and falling asleep in a pillow fort eating something delicious that Hunk made– “You were right there!” and Green is telling her that this isn’t Keith’s fault, to stop screaming at him because he already had to wake up and find Lance unconscious and unresponsive and  _ not breathing _ on the floor of his room before they could even go train, and it’s not his fault for finding him any more than it’s hers for letting him go to bed early.

Hunk joins as she’s in the middle of shouting words she isn’t even conscious of saying, and the expression on his face silences her. 

Shiro, who hadn’t even been awake when she had ran from the room, looks positively defeated when he walks in, and there’s failure and remorse echoing in every movement– everyone’s movements. They should have known better– they should have all known better.

Lance is still in the pod, writhing in pain that he thought would be over by now, and Pidge can’t stop yelling. She’s not yelling at Keith anymore, and she can’t face Hunk, or any of the adults with the expressions of knowing gravity. She’s yelling at herself– she should have seen, she should have helped, she should have  _ known _ . She’s yelling at Lance– how could you do this, why didn’t you say, wake up goddammit. She’s screaming and screaming and screaming until it becomes apparent that nobody can hear her because she wasn’t screaming at all: she was whispering sobs that hardly made a noise, and they only sounded like screams to her because they were the only noises in the room.

In her dark bedroom. 

She almost stands straight up in bed sprints off to Lance’s room to insist that they make tonight a “Treat YoSelf” night because she is  _ terrified _ , but then she remembers the clock is saying it’s two am, her circadian rhythm is saying its two am, and she’s so exhausted from tackling the galra and piloting a robot cat earlier in the evening that she’s asleep before she can get a second sock on.

 

HUNK

Lance isn’t himself. 

If the galran empire would kindly notice that and call a ceasefire long enough to do something other than eat a quick meal or snatch an hour or two of sleep at a time, Hunk would notice that, do something. As it stands, he doesn’t have time for anything but sleeping and eating; sometimes he’ll get long enough to shower and wipe off the accumulating layers of sweat and grime and specks of blood, then the alarm blares again and he’s back in Yellow, letting off waves of cannon fire and taking as many hits as he dishes out. 

There’s nothing he can focus on, really, except dodge/aim/fire/repeat, there’s no time to notice things like fading smiles/forced laughter/accumulating scars/silence. Hunk is just barely successful at keeping himself out of the line of fire– and he’s running on only a few hours of sleep for the past two days, so he thinks he’s doing fine, thank you very much.

Well, he thinks he’s doing fine, until he hears a shout from Lance and sees a blast of light: ion cannon. It’s over. He’s a goner. There’s no way Yellow is fast enough to dodge an ion cannon blast. This is it.

Except the hit doesn’t come. What does come is Black, soaring past him and dipping below and catching Blue in her jaws. Blue looks awful– dented and blackened and torn– and then Hunk recognizes the obvious. 

“Lance?” He calls tentatively over the intercom. Silence. He wants to go back to the castle with Black and Shiro and Blue and Lance, wants to make sure his best friend is okay, wants to thank him for saving his life (‘returning the favor,’ Lance would call it). 

But Allura is sensing the concern, and seeing the oncoming Galra reinforcements. “We’ll take care of Lance,” she reassures them, “finish off those galra fighters, or even the castle won’t be safe.” There’s a concerning amount of worry peppering her accent, but they don’t have time to ask about it, because the enemy is already trying to mow them down.

It takes hours.There’s just always another wave of reinforcements, like an endless video game level. It’s an unrealistic amount of galra ships, literally. 

When they get back, they’re covered in cuts and bruises, even from inside their lions. They’re sweating despite the vast, freezing emptiness of space and the cool air conditioning of the castle. Regardless of their exhaustion, everyone heads straight to the medical bay. None of the pods are occupied. 

Allura joins them with a crumbling facade of leaderly calm, Coran is sitting on the floor with his head in his hands. Lance is on the table– and his blood is everywhere, the table is covered in it, it drips to the floor, the floor is smeared with it, as well as some parts of the wall and a medical pod. Hunk didn’t know the human body contained that much blood. It’s unrealistic. He vomits. 

Next thing he knows, Shiro is checking every vein he can find for a pulse and Keith is just holding him and Pidge is trying to reason with everyone that he’s not  _ dead _ , just sleeping. Hunk vomits again. He wades through puddles and pools of blood, knowing that Lance was dead but needing to check. Not Lance. Not his best friend. Not him. Not the little boy he’d play cowboys with for hours in fourth grade. 

Except it all makes sense. He’d take an explosion for a man he barely knew. He’d jump in front of a knife for someone he didn’t know at all. He’d take an ion cannon for Hunk. There’s a very fine line between self-sacrifice and suicide. 

The blood is growing, not pouring from Lance’s veins anymore, just growing and growing and growing until that is all there is anywhere and Hunk cannot for the life of him keep even a breath of air below his trachea.

Then he sits straight up in bed. He’s determined to go talk to Lance– tell him the dream, if nothing else. He gets up and puts some shoes on, and then the alarm blares and he has to go deal with another galran attack force.

  
  


KEITH

The alarm blares and everyone sprints to answer it. They’re resting on a galra empire-occupied planet, and they thought they hadn’t been noticed yet. Rookie mistake. Now they pay the price. The lions would be ineffective here: they’re in a dense forest, and there’s no fighter ships or other air ambush, just lots and lots of foot soldiers. They change into their suits and have their bayards ready in no time. Shiro is panicked and barking orders and encouragement, Hunk is acutely and abnormally nervous, Pidge looks like she hasn’t slept in days (which is entirely likely), Allura and Coran can hardly tell them how many galra there are, they just say to hold on until they can be ready to jump through a wormhole. At first, Keith can’t see Lance, and he’s torn between anxiety and aggravation. 

There’s no time for any of that though. Keith’s got his sword poised to strike, and he’s tearing through all sorts of soldiers. He’s back to back with Hunk, while Pidge and Shiro fight side-by-side. Lance is never this slow, never. Keith finds himself asking about it over the intercom.

“Lance, where  _ are _ you?” he demands sharply. “We could really use your help out here!”

Hunk’s got a haunted look in his eyes, but Keith can’t see that, he can only hear it in his voice when he says “Guys, I had a really weird dream last night.”

Shiro cuts him off, “Maybe there’s a better time to talk about that, right now– Hunk, duck!”

“Point taken,” Hunk squeaks as a galran head rolls past him and the blood drips from Keith’s blade. 

There seems to be no end to them, but after a while team Voltron bottlenecks the flow into a dense section of forest that has them tripping over their own feet. It’s still endless, but they’re just dealing with seven or so at a time, as opposed to over twenty. 

That’s when they see a blue suit running at them and Lance has something in his hands that he’s being awful careful with. Total no-show this whole time, and now he’s sprinting like his life depends on it and slamming through their bottleneck and screaming “Come get me you ugly, purple puta madre!” It doesn’t stop the galra, it has them running towards him, improbably, horrifyingly. Soon he’s getting the shit kicked out of him and they’re all on top of him and Keith cannot, for the life of him, move his legs. They’re stuck in cement. 

He can scream though, and he screams for all he’s worth, he screams and screams until there is an explosion loud enough to drown him out and powerful enough to decimate every galra on the battlefield. It’s entirely impossible, every bit of it, and something is telling Keith this is all wrong. 

Still, he yanks his feet out of cement and wades through dead flesh to try and find even a piece of Lance. No such luck. Just lots of blood and torn apart flesh and bones dropped in like sprinkles. Lance is gone– and there’s just six wheels instead of seven. 

Keith bolts awake half-screaming Lance’s name. Just a dream, but it’s the latest of many and they’re only getting more vivid, more violent. Keith can still smell the burning flesh and feel the tear tracks running down his face. He’s breathing like he was running, and run he does. He throws on a pair of shoes and his jacket and he runs right to Lance’s room– three in the morning be damned. 

He bangs on the door several times, and when he doesn’t get an answer he barges in. Lance isn’t in his room. Now it’s a matter of survival, as far as Keith is concerned: he’s got to find Lance and he’s got to do it now, before his dreams come true. 

So it’s three in the morning and Keith is sprinting all over the castle, with no clue where Lance could even be, and he finds him slumped in a window with all of space laid out just beyond the glass. There’s no response as he runs up, and by now Keith is thoroughly panicked, so he shakes Lance by the shoulders until his eyes open.

“Where were you? You’re room was empty.” His voice is rough like cracked leather, quieter than he wants it to be– which might be a good thing, because it is still very early in the artificial morning.

“I was taking a walk,” Lance answers awkwardly, rubbing the exhaustion from his face, “Couldn’t sleep in my room– dios mio, Keith, were you  _ crying _ ?” There’s not even any teasing in Lance’s voice, he’s just tired and worried. 

“ _ No _ ,” Keith snaps, “I– we need to talk.”

“Fine, okay. Keith, are you sure–”

“Shut it, Lance.” There’s a hurt blooming like a bruise underneath everything else, and Keith backs up, breathes. “Sorry. Sorry. I had a dream.”

Lance is fully awake now, and he raises an eyebrow, “Why does that mean you wake me up at three am crying?– oh, sorry, not  _ crying _ , just sweating from the eyes.” It’s the first flippant joke Keith has heard from him in at least two weeks, and he starts laughing, and crying again. “Keith, what’s going on? Sit down.”

“You  _ died _ , Lance!” Keith blurts.

Lance grins, but this one doesn’t reach his eyes somehow, “Was there a parade?”

“It’s not funny! You died, and there wasn’t even a body– you can’t do that!”

“Everybody dies sometime.”

“Lance,  _ please _ .”

“Please  _ what _ ?” Lance snaps, “I can’t promise you that I won’t die, Keith. And who’s to say that my death wouldn’t be worth more than my life? Hm? What if I die and it saves everybody else and I just get to stop–”

Silence again. 

“Stop what, Lance?” Keith whispers. 

Lance’s face has turned to stone, immutable and pale. 

“Lance, stop what?”

Still no response.

“Lance, you can’t ‘stop.’ You just can’t, and let me tell you why: you are worth ten times more, a hundred times more, infinitely more alive than you are dead, I don’t care who might be saved by you dying; I saw you die in that dream and I fell apart, I could not function if you were dead, Lance; and even when I woke up, I was still crying and I had to come find you because I have been having these dreams for a week– Red is  _ not _ being subtle anymore; Lance, I know you’re not okay, I know you need help, but I don’t know how to help you, you need to tell me how to help you; I cannot see myself alive in a reality where you aren’t, Lance; you’re a part of this family, and you don’t get to leave family, and especially not like that.” It might be the longest sentence Keith has said out loud to Lance– and it leaves his breath hitching and his heart racing and his eyes watering all over again. 

For several seconds, Lance just blinks at him, uncomprehendingly, afraid, suspended disbelief. Then he just grabs him in a hug

 

It is not easy, and it is not fast, and it is not alone, but eventually, Lance is himself again. 


End file.
